An ideal miniature relay would provide small size, high reliability in operation, and low cost of manufacture. However, accomplishing all three of these design goals simultaneously has proven to be difficult in the prior art. Many different types of miniature relay designs have been suggested, including piezoelectric, electrostatically deflected beam, thermally deflected beam, and printed coil magnetic designs. To reduce manufacturing costs to a minimum and to provide small size, planar fabrication techniques are exploited to the greatest extent possible in these designs.
A primary difficulty with these approaches has been achieving reliable operation. In practice, reliability is limited by the small forces produced at the switch contacts. For optimal operation, closure of the switch contacts should be maintained by the highest possible force. In the prior art, acceptable contact forces have proven difficult to obtain.